


Don't Trust Me

by lesbianophelia



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alternate Games, Angst, Drabble, F/M, except that it's super long
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-16
Updated: 2014-06-16
Packaged: 2018-02-04 20:57:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1792984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbianophelia/pseuds/lesbianophelia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gale and Madge in the Hunger Games, based off of the drabble prompt: "Don't Trust Me".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Trust Me

For the life of him, Gale couldn’t get a read on the girl from District One. She had volunteered for the Games, so she was clearly a career, but she didn’t _look_  deadly. Until he saw her in the Training Center, he would have thought it would be impossible to be afraid of her. Not with that blonde ponytail that she kept tied back with, of all things, a pink ribbon.  
  
  
She was the frontrunner from the start, and even though Gale’s escort assured him that he had made an impression at the Reaping, the rumors about the girl were flying just hours after their arrival in the Capitol. He couldn’t help but to ask his stylist. Which was probably a form of self torture, because he wanted to win, but, well, want in one hand and spit in the other. He knew his odds, and it wouldn’t take much at all for hers to be higher. Sure enough, she was a Career – though they don’t like that word in the Capitol. Or in the Career districts, Gale supposes. She spent maybe a year and a half with her father, the Mayor, and then got shipped off to this prestigious school in District One that was supposed to teach her how to master every weapon known to man.   
  
She kept looking at him during Training, every single time he found himself unwillingly socializing with another tribute, eyes narrowed as if she’s trying to challenge him. He flicked his eyebrows up at her, because someone like her has got to know that fighting with another tribute before the Games is illegal, and okay, maybe he wants to rile her up a little. See her come undone.   
That was all it took to send her sauntering over towards him, hair swishing in time with her hips.   
  
“That was pretty ballsy, you know, volunteering like that,” she announced, voice sugary sweet. He rolled his eyes. Does she really think it matters to him, if some brat from District One think he’s brave?   
  
“Could be complimenting yourself there, One,” he said. “Didn’t they teach you anything about being humble?”   
  
“ _One_?” she repeated. “Is that seriously the best you could come up with? I’m disappointed, honestly, I expected a little more out of you.”   
  
“Lots of people expect lots of things from me,” Gale shot back, and instantly cursed himself for being so terrible with comeback lines. He knew he would probably come up with something much better later than night. That was all he got, though.   
  
“Astoundingly, I don’t hate you just yet,” the girl said. “So I’m gonna give you this one piece of advice for free. If you have  _any_ desire to get back to District Twelve, then you can’t trust anyone.”   
  
“Oh yeah?” Gale asked. “And what, I’m supposed to trust you on that?”   
  
The girl chuckled. “No,  _Twelve_. You clearly weren’t listening to anything I just said. Don’t trust me.”   
  
-  
  
Her name was Madge Undersee, and he learned that the rumors were true during the first interview of the night. Or, at least, she  _wanted_ everyone to think that the rumors were true. He’s seen her throwing knives, but that almost seems like a different girl than the one that was on stage. Her hair had the pink ribbon in it, yes, but she was also in this flouncy white dress that he couldn’t imagine her wanting to get dirty.   
  
His interview was last, and he thought he did okay, for the most part. He talked about his brother a lot. That’s all anyone cared about, really, when it came to him. His relationship with his brother. It could be worse. The girl from District Two’s mentor was clearly selling her based on her looks which, really, compared to Madge, was a ridiculous tactic. What? It’s not like he was there to  _date_  or anything, but he had prepared himself for little enough in the way of pretty things in those couple of weeks, and it’s possible that maybe he couldn’t help but to notice her. Whatever. Neither could the rest of the country. They ended up on the same elevator when everyone was released from the stage, and she was stuck riding all the way up with him, since he managed to hit  _12_ before she could get to the button for  _1_.   
  
“That’s a pretty dress,” he commented, and she must have been intent on unnerving him as much as possible while she still could, because she reached back, pulled the zipper down, and stepped out of it.   
  
“Keep it,” she said over her shoulder, chin raised defiantly. He left it where it had pooled on the floor when he strode out of the elevator, but kind of wondered if he was supposed to grab it, just to call her bluff. Girls in District Twelve were hard to understand, but, as far as he could tell, girls from District One were even worse. He thinks of Katniss, back home, who might have even snorted at the thought of this girl trying so hard to get a rise out of him. He had started this game, didn’t he? When he tried to agitate her in the Training Center?   
  
God, she was pretty, though. Looked almost like a Merchant, which he guessed maybe she was, if things were at all similar in District One. Ha! What a thought, things in One being anything like they were in Twelve. The girl had probably never missed a meal in her life. What a waste, learning to use weapons and not using them for food. And, okay, maybe that was what it took to snap him back to attention while they were eating dinner, was thinking about how unfair all of this was, that a girl like Madge Undersee could just stride right in here and play it like a game.

-  
  
He didn’t expect his snare to catch a  _person_. He had meant to keep to himself, actually, for as long as possible. To see if maybe he was right, maybe he could have made it if he tried to run away from Twelve with Katniss. But no, of course the girl from District One that he had avoided looking at in the morning walked right into it, and of course she screamed when she was lifted by her foot.   
  
He laughed when he saw her. He couldn’t help it. She crossed her arms at him, scowled, tried to get herself down, and he leaned up against a tree a few feet away and watched, thoroughly amused.   
  
“Gale Hawthorne, I swear to God,” she said, absolutely seething. “If you don’t let me down –”   
  
“Oh, wow, I’m trembling,” he said, because there was no way she was scary at all, hanging from that tree. “Actually, here,” he said, and she looked a little relieved when he took a step towards her, but only until she realized that he was going for her backpack. She flailed around, trying to land a kick or a hit or something, but it was no use, he had slipped the backpack off of her and onto him before she could manage to do any real damage. And it was probably a stupid move, but he let her down after that, because he knew his mother was watching and if he got home he was going to be in for the lecture of his life if he had just left her hanging there.   
  
“Sorry,” he said, a hand on one of the straps of his new backpack. “What was that you were swearing? Something about an alliance.”   
  
She glared at him, almost enough to finally look dangerous, but he had the upper hand and they both knew it, so she agreed to give him a hand  _if_ he gave her the backpack. He, of course, declined, and started making his way through the woods, and she had actually followed him, grumbled something about how he could at least give her a knife and he said that maybe, if she was nice enough, he’d share the sleeping bag.   
  
-   
  
She was nice enough for the sleeping bag, and for, eventually, a few of her knives. Or, at least, as nice as you could expect such a brutal girl to be. She couldn’t quite keep her little comments to herself as they traipsed through the woods, but – not that he would ever admit it in a million years, he might have liked it a little bit. Might have liked her a little bit. Liked the way that she threw her head back when she laughed, as if something could have possibly been funny in the arena.   
Like, for instance, when she told him about District One. About what it was like in the academy. About her little brother that she never met. He wasn’t put through the training, she explained, because she guessed her parents wanted to keep one. He couldn’t imagine it, living that way and she laughed when he said so.   
  
“I can’t imagine living in  _District Twelve_ ,” she said, unable to keep the disgust out of her voice. “Is it as dirty as it looks on TV?”   
  
“You could try wiping the screen,” Gale said. “Might help.”   
  
She laughed at that, too. He knew that they would enemies, soon enough, but there was something about her that he couldn’t exactly hate.   
  
It was the third day, when they were roasting their dinner over the fire, that she admitted that she had never been allowed to date. It would have been a distraction from her studies, and she figured that, if she got out of it, she’d be able to kiss all the boys she wanted.   
  
When he thought about it, later, he knew how hard the girl had been trying to manipulate him. It had worked, too. That was the worst part. Because he didn’t even think about it before he leaned forward and kissed her. Her hand worked its way into his hair, and she kissed a lot like he would expect she would. Aggressive, demanding, and actually relatively good, for a girl with no experience.   
  
-   
  
He didn’t realize what was going, how the Capitol was selling them, until they said that two tributes could win, assuming they were in an alliance before the announcement was made. Madge did, though, and when she laughed that time, he hadn’t realized what was different about it, but there was something.   
  
He got his bow, and from there, things went quickly. He thought about what he told Katniss in the Justice Building, about the fact that it couldn’t be too different, killing animals versus killing the other tributes. It had seemed like such an exaggeration when she said it, one of those things that he thought he would make the others feel better, but he couldn’t help but to realize that he wasn’t too wrong about that.   
  
-   
  
The rule changed back the morning after they killed the last tribute, and Madge had reached for her knives before the announcement was over. But Gale had his bow ready by the time she started to speak, and after “I’m sorry, Gale, but I told you not to –” the arrow was flying.   
  
He took the pink ribbon, because it seemed right, this time, crumpled it up, and stuffed it in his pocket.   
  


 _-_  
  
What he did is a little bit easier to forgive when he learns that she had been playing him the whole time. When the recap video shows how different her laugh had been during her interview, he feels his stomach release itself from the knot it had been tied into for the last few days, but the relief is short-lived, because whether he managed to trust her or not, he still killed her.   
  
And he wants to feel guilty, but instead, he feels nothing. 


End file.
